


The Roll of Ancient Thunder

by cadmean



Category: Path to Ascendancy - Ian Cameron Esslemont, The Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, post DL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:05:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: On the way to Unta, Wu and Dancer are forced to take an unintended detour.





	The Roll of Ancient Thunder

_Follow the river_ , Wu had said, _and we’ll reach Unta in no time._

Once they had reached the coast – only stopping for supplies on the way where needed, preferably at Cawn – they would swing south-east, sticking to the shoreline until they were within reach of Unta. An easy journey, provided that they didn’t run afoul of any of the river pirates or indeed refugees from the scattered remnants of King Chulalorn’s army. Wu had been quite proud of the plan, cooing to the Nacht about how the royal house of Unta would soon fall before their combined might. Dancer wasn’t quite sure whether that referred to Wu and himself or Wu and the Nacht, and, seeing the Nacht bare its teeth at him, did not feel particularly inclined to ask.

As Dancer’s old master had been fond of saying, however, no matter how well-thought out a given plan, it was worth less than a pile of bhederin shit if you couldn’t realize it in practice.

They had been making good time, truth be told, and the one time they did see a large sail on the horizon coming toward them, it had turned out to be a trading vessel looking to take advantage of the chaos in Li Heng to make capital. That encounter had occurred early on, too, and the rest of the journey Dancer had taken to sitting at the helm of the ship in order to steer.

This was not because he fancied himself particularly good at commandeering a ship, even one as small as this one was; nor because he wanted to actively gain such a skill. What he _did_ want was to actually reach Unta at some point in the near future – and since most of Wu’s time was spent staring at the Jaghut’s box containing the flint arrowhead and occasionally muttering obscenities at it, Dancer had been forced to take the helm.

By his calculations they should be reaching Cawn soon, if not outright be in sight of it within the next day or so. Accordingly he’d been making preparations: prepping his equipment, making sure all knives where were they were supposed to be. Intermittently he’d been prodding Wu, too, but his companion’s attention was so focused on the box that he got little more than grunts in response.

Which was fine. Really. It wasn’t as if they actually needed a plan in order to get supplies in Idryn anyhow, since they were both great at improvising. Worst case scenario, they could just sell the Nacht to some street performer to make money – an idea that cheered Dancer up immensely the more he thought about it.

It was then, just as he was calculating how many supplies they could get in exchange for the Nacht, that the boat hit something with a dull _thud_ and a terrible scraping sound.

Dancer had his knives drawn before he’d even properly registered what was happening, in the same motion leaping up to perch on the edge of the boat, looking around for any signs of danger—

Which would have proven fatal for the continued buoyancy of the boat had it not, in fact, beached itself in every sense of the word. Where he expected to be greeted by the sight of water, all Dancer could see was sand – as well as several splintered planks of wood which, upon a cursory glance, appeared to have been torn loose from the area near the bottom of their boat.

Somewhat less hasty, Dancer clambered out of the boat after a questioning glance at Wu to take in their new surroundings. A rocky beach lay in front of him, full of small pebbles with only a few bits of finer sand between them, but a beach nevertheless. Behind a stretch of increasingly larger rocks the beach eventually gave way to grass and, soon enough, what appeared to be an unusually dense forest.

This, Dancer quickly decided, was not good. What was even worse, however, was that both beach and forest stretched on to the horizon both to his left and to his right side. Common sense dictated that they must have run ashore on one of the riverbanks; actual reality as well as an increasing acceptancy of all things strange told Dancer that it wasn’t so much that their boat had drifted ashore as that the river had simply and quite drastically decided to come to an end.

They were on an island, a very _large_ island, by the looks of it, located in the middle of an otherwise quite small river, and Dancer was not in the least amused.

Wu, on the other hand, was taking it all incredibly well – he jumped off of the boat almost immediately, landing in the sand of the beach with a soft thump. The Nacht was still perched on his shoulder and seemed to be similarly delighted.

After kicking up a fair amount of sand, Wu came to stand next to where Dancer was still doing his best to will the island back out of existence.

“My desire to reach Unta must have allowed us swifter voyage than usual,” Wu ventured with a note of hesitant glee.

Dancer regarded first the foliage all but looming in front of them, then glanced sidelong at his companion, whose mien was much like the forest surrounding them: impenetrable, and swathed in all too many shadows. “This does not in any way look like Unta.”

Wu, for his part, simply stood there as he surveyed their surroundings, all the while stroking the Nacht riding on his shoulder as if wasn’t a complete terror with a mouth full of terribly sharp teeth. Eventually he shrugged. “Perhaps they decided to grow a forest to complement the sprawling filth of civilization?”

“Perhaps we aren’t in Unta after all?”

“Perhaps—“

“Perhaps we’ve wandered where we shouldn’t have, Wu. _Again_ ,” Dancer snapped, his patience for his companion’s antics quickly running thin in face of the utter failure their grand adventure was rapidly turning into. “Perhaps we’re lost.”

“We aren’t _lost_ ,” huffed Wu, scowling like he took personal offense at the word, “We’re just not quite where we wanted to be. There’s a difference.”

Dancer valiantly resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. The Nacht, perhaps sharing his feelings, jumped down from Wu’s shoulder and sped off into to the undergrowth. “Semantics aren’t going to help us fix the boat.”

“Do we still need the boat? We might as well walk the rest of the way, once we get off this island. Our grand entrance into the city will not, admittedly, be all that grand with the dust of the road clinging to our quite literal coattails, but—“ Wu suddenly tapered off, cocking his head to the side and staring intently into the dense foliage in front of them. Annoyed, but not quite certain what else to do, Dancer followed his gaze.

From deep inside the forest came a scream. Inhuman.

Dancer looked at Wu.

Wu stared back.

“I think,” Dancer slowly said, “we probably should have put a leash on the Nacht.”

 

* * *

 

Not even a bell later Wu and Dancer were both trudging through the dense foliage themselves. Dancer had taken the lead, knives not yet drawn but ready for anything. Wu followed close on his heels, swatting impertinently at the occasional branch or fauna sticking into his path.

On second, much closer inspection, it had turned out that the boat was irreparably broken. Dancer hadn’t been particularly surprised by that, though he did silently wonder to himself whether the level of rot that had already taken hold of the shattered planks was much more pronounced than it should have been.

In the end he decided that it didn’t matter: magically-enhanced or not, the boat was still broken beyond what the two of them could possibly hope to fix. So off they went into the forest, both silently entertaining the vague hope to perhaps suddenly find themselves near Unta after all.

“The shadows cast on this island are curious,” Wu eventually remarked in his usual nonsequitur manner.

Dancer gave a noncommittal grunt and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. Indulging the little mage would lead to him chattering on for hours, Dancer knew, and he wasn’t mentally prepared for that just now.

Before long they happened upon a trail stomped into the vegetation and moist earth. It looked old but well-worn in the manner that spoke of regular, if perhaps somewhat infrequent use, and whatever footprints remained had long coalesced into one flat path.

“The way to Unta, I presume?” Dancer asked.

Wu snorted. “Where else?”

They decided to follow it deeper into the forest.

For another hour or so they marched, hearing animals around them but not seeing any no matter how silently Dancer bid Wu to tread. Eventually the footpath tapered out, getting lost among a sudden field of high grass – a sun-lit clearing, so unexpected that Wu and Dancer both came to an abrupt halt as they took in the sight in front of them.

There, at the heart of the forest, looking like it had been thrown straight out of some old housewife’s tale, they found a temple.

It was in ruins, moss-covered stones only haphazardly managing to hold on to the form of walls, with a roof that was more jagged holes and splintered, rotted beams of timber than anything else. Flat stones peeking through the grass leading up to the ruin hinted at the remnants of some sort of paved pathway, but the deadly combination of time and nature had claimed most of it.

Wu, predictably, was delighted.

“Imagine! An island, floating just out of step with the water around it, tethered not by stone or chains but by bands of magic, strung tight as anything.” He turned to look at Dancer and, grinning wildly, wagged a finger at him. “I _told_ you the shadows fell strangely here.”

“I don’t—“

“Because of course they do. Multiple sources of light do tend to have that effect, and fire, ever-changing by nature, casts the most shadows by far. _Of course_.” And with that, Wu made off for the dark archway of the temple’s door.

 

* * *

 

One Jaghut, Dancer reflected, was certainly enough to last any one person a lifetime. Two was beginning to push it, and anyone crazy – or unlucky – enough to run into three of the broody beings must have done something remarkably stupid to offend the twin gods of chance.

The skulls of no less than five Jaghut were nailed to the walls of the temple’s interior.

“We should leave,” said Dancer, very quietly, and the goosebumps that had just begun to rise on his skin upon entering the temple spread in full force when he turned to Wu and saw that the little mage had an expression of undeniable fear on his face.

“I find myself agreeing with you,” Wu muttered, yet even as he was speaking he reached up with one spindly hand to prod at the skull closest to him.

Dancer snatched his wrist before he could touch the skull. Wu glared at him and Dancer glared back, and after what he deigned to be long enough he briefly intensified his glare and released his hold. “Then let’s go, Wu!”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid.”

The voice came from out of the gloom to their right, raspy and deep. Without thinking Dancer drew a throwing knife with one hand while pushing Wu behind him with the other – yet before he could even so much as aim it, a heavy-looking, deep-black stone sword was levelled at him from out of the gloom.

“Don’t,” the voice said.

“Leave it,” Wu said from behind Dancer, patting him on the arm holding the blade. Reluctantly, Dancer returned it to the sheath on his belt. Wu then continued, “And you—come out, let’s have a look at you. It’s not polite conversation with you standing in the shadows like that.”

The voice gave a chuckle, and though it didn’t say anything, Dancer could hear shifting sounds as the sword withdrew back into the darkness – though they sounded more like bone and dead-dry cloth than the expected shifting of armor plates.

What stepped into the light of the nearby torch, then, was no heavily-armored warrior but a being that looked as if it had just crawled out of the grave: atop an emaciated, bone-dry and in fact quite bony frame sat skull. Hollow eye sockets fixed first on Dancer, then Wu, the skull cocking to the side in what Dancer would have called curiosity, were it a living creature. Wrapped around the corpse’s shoulders was the pelt of some creature and this, if nothing else, seemed to have weathered the ages fairly well, the fur shining as it caught the flickering light. The sword was strapped across its back.

“Imass,” Wu hissed, peeking out from behind Dancer.

“Human,” the thing – Imass, and the name did ring a faint bell somewhere – replied.

Wu, showing all the social decorum of a stump of wood, immediately remarked, “You should be dead.” And nodded to himself as if he was remarkably pleased to have noticed.

The corpse’s expression didn’t change in the slightest, though Dancer had the feeling this was mainly the case because it didn’t have much of a face left to express anything with. “But I am not, and so you must realize that you have named me wrongly.”

“Imass, T’lan Imass, what’s the difference?”

“The Imass are dead.”

“As are you. Only death hasn’t caught up yet, has it? Hood was unable to claim you.”

Quickly Dancer cut in, “May we know your name, T’lan Imass?”

“I am Varalan Sor, once of the Logros, now, alas, clanless. I had assumed you knew. Was that not why you came to my island?”

“ _Your_ island?”

“Who else is there to lay claim to it?”

Wu nodded at that. “Fair enough.” With a quick nod, he added, “I’m Wu.”

The T’lan Imass regarded him carefully, his lips twisting into what Dancer assumed was a smile. “Are you?”

Wu huffed, and, quite uncharacteristically, said nothing.

With a roll of his eyes Dancer stepped forward to face Varalan Sor. “My name is Dancer.”

“That’s better,” the T’lan Imass said with a puffing, choked sound that sounded all too much like derisive laughter for Dancer’s taste, causing his fingers to twitch toward the hilts of his knives. The hollow, dried-out pits where Varalan Sor’s eyes had once been immediately came to rest on him, however, and under the uncannily disapproving glare the yellowed skull was giving him Dancer forced his hands to hang still at his sides.

They lapsed into silence until at last Varalan Sor rasped, “Well then. I haven’t had visitors in a while. Do you want to see my garden?”

 

* * *

 

Varalan Sor led the two of them through the temple’s interior in complete silence. There were several times when the bony thing had just rounded a corner that Dancer considered throwing caution to the wind and stabbing Varalan Sor in the back, but each and every time Wu was there, shaking his head, and so he never did.

The interior wasn’t much to look at. The few sconces in the walls were lit, but the light the flickering flames created was dim and full of shadows and hindered more than it lit the way. All of the corridors looked similar as well, the roots of some large tree seemingly having burrowed their way through most of the stone and creating odd little nooks at several intersections.

Wu, to his credit, had kept silent for most of their journey and it was only near the end, when the Imass’ pace slowed down even further that he started up with a steady stream of – largely one-sided – conversation. Dancer suspected that his companion would have gone on and on until he had talked Varalan Sor to proper death, had said undead warrior not suddenly come to a halt and shushed him with a raised hand.

“There it is,” Varalan Sor muttered. As Wu and Dancer watched he stretched out a bony arm into the darkness – and after a couple of seconds pulled it back, now with the Nacht sitting on his hand. Without so much as a comment to them, Varalan Sor then continued shuffling along.

Wu and Dancer followed after him after a moment of dumbstruck silence, Wu hissing, “That’s my Nacht!”

“You want to fight him for it?” Dancer whispered.

“Well,” began Wu, just as Varalan Sor proclaimed, “Here we are.”

And there they were indeed: Dancer blinked against the sudden bright glare of the sky as they stepped through one final doorway, out of the temple and into what appeared to be some sort of garden. The forest was of course omnipresent around the edges of the area, dark and looming and terribly dense, but what Varalan Sor was now quite animatedly gesturing at was a wide open area full of high grass. A gentle breeze swished through the long stalks, rustling them in wave-like motions; somewhere above, a bird cried out.

Varalan Sor, the Nacht now riding on his shoulder, turned to Wu and Dancer. It was difficult to tell in a corpse, but from the way his shoulders were leaned back Dancer had the distinct impression that the T’lan Imass was happy. “Wonderful, isn’t it? My own private garden -- at times I sit here and marvel at the sounds of life, the beauty of nature, and the way the wind caresses these old bones.” He gave a dry chuckle then. “Other times, I like to think that Ayala Alalle herself is growing green with jealousy at the way my plants grow.”

“It’s very green,” Dancer agreed while Wu was still glaring angrily at the Nacht, “but forgive me: Ayala Allale?”

Varalan Sor nodded. “She tends the gardens growing on the moon. I always wanted to build gardens full of lush vegetation, lined with grass and the ground so soft you wouldn’t have to worry about stabbing your toes on any rocks,” he added, sounding wistful. “She did not agree. Called it a dream unworthy of a warrior, as did the rest of my clan. So I was forced to part ways with them.”

Dancer’s gaze once more swept across the area in front of him, until at last it came to rest on a set of scattered rocks lying smack dab in the middle of the – admittedly very luscious – grass. With a slow, pointed turn, he faced the Imass. “And what’s that, then?”

Varalan Sor said nothing. Instead he moved past Dancer and Wu, slowly dragging his bones forward until he was standing in front of the rocks. With one desiccated finger, he pointed at a particularly moss-covered specimen. 

“It’s a symbol,” the T’lan Imass confessed after a moment.

Dancer could only stare blankly at the moss-covered rock, which was lying very rock-like among all the other rocks. They all looked as if they had been haphazardly dropped there at one point and then simply been forgotten about. Eventually he asked, “A symbol for what?”

Varalan Sor considered the question for a few seconds, then shrugged. “That remains to be seen.”

“Either way,” Wu piped up, “it’s a damn useless symbol. Who’s going to find it out here?”

The T’lan Imass frowned. Dancer’s hands drifted to his knives again, and this time Varalan Sor did not seem to notice.

“A symbol has no symbolic meaning whatsoever if there’s nobody around to see it. And here there’s just you, isn’t there?” Wu went on, either entirely unaware of the T’lan Imass’ quickly-souring mood or, as Dancer suspected, simply not caring for it. “You built the symbol, you can’t also be the one to be, ah, inspired by it. Or demoralized. Or—“

“Mage,” Varalan Sor growled, the Nacht on his shoulder shrinking in on itself, “don’t mock my rock.”

Dancer stepped forward slightly, putting himself between Wu and the increasingly put-upon looking Varalan Sor. “T’lan Imass. Did you divert us to your island just so you could philosophize about your rock?”

“Assassin. Did you come here – breaking through my wards in the process – to pontificate about my rock’s inability to be a proper symbol of anything? Very rude of you, that.”

“We were on the way to Unta. I didn’t even know your island existed until our boat crashed here.” A bit too honest, perhaps, but where was the harm?

“And nevertheless you are here, when I most certainly did not invite you.”

That sounded just a bit too familiar for Dancer’s liking. “Wu—“

“Time to go!” With that his companion surged into motion – inexplicably not away from the Imass but toward him, and in one unexpected leap grabbed the Nacht from off of the T’lan Imass’s shoulder to prop it down on his own.

Varalan Sor stared, insofar as that two hollow pits could stare. “That’s my Nacht.”

“Well,” began Wu again. Whatever he was going to say was abruptly cut off as Dancer grabbed him by the collar and dragged him off into the forest, shouting, “Let’s go!”

They raced through the forest, Dancer taking the lead and shouldering aside various branches and plants in an effort to get to the beach as quickly as possible. Looking over his shoulder he couldn’t see much else besides Wu and the Nacht, but considering how slowly the long-dead T’lan Imass had moved in their company and how fast they were going now, Dancer doubted that it’d be able to catch up to them.

Within a few minutes – curious, that, because he could’ve sworn it had taken them hours going the other way – they broke free of the last pieces of fauna and found themselves on the rocky shore once more.

“Where’s the boat?” Dancer shouted, frantically casting his gaze across the devastatingly empty beach.

Wu grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him to the left, pointing – “There!” – at the boat, which was now peeking out from between several larger rocks.

“That’s not where we left it,” Dancer cautioned even as he quickly made his way towards it, Wu in his wake.

“Does it matter? It’s there, it doesn’t look like it’s broken any more – let’s leave before that dreary bag of bones catches up with us,” Wu said, shrugging and once more looking like the picture nonchalance.

“I suppose—“ Dancer got no further than that, however, instead coming to an abrupt halt as something began to move in the last few spans between him and the boat.

And there, arriving in a swirl of dead air and age-old dust, stood Varalan Sor.

Dancer only just had enough time to push Wu back with one hand and bring up one of his knives in the other before the T’lan Imass’ stone sword was crashing down on him. His blade held for barely a moment – it wasn’t meant to deflect normal blades, let alone the heavy beast of a sword Varalan Sor wielded – the metal groaning as it first bent and then simply splintered like brittle glass under the force of the impact. Cursing, Dancer reached for his other dagger, only to belatedly realize that Varalan Sor’s strike had shattered more than just his knife: his fingers were shaking, a bruise already forming across what he hoped was only a sprained wrist—

“Get down!” came Wu’s voice from somewhere behind him and Dancer, well-accustomed to this by now, immediately dropped down into a low crouch.

A blast of shadowy energy flew past his head, striking the T’lan Imass straight in the chest. Varalan Sor reeled back and Dancer took the opportunity to fling his other dagger at the Imass’ desiccated chest – it struck true, lodging itself deep into the bone, yet seemed to have no effect beyond that.

Varalan Sor looked down at his chest, then, very slowly, turned back to Dancer—

Who at this point was already halfway inside the boat, gesturing wildly towards Wu. “Get in the godsdamned boat!”

Wu, for once, went without complaining.

 

* * *

 

Varalan Sor watched the two young men sail off, emlava fur once again wrapped tightly around his frame. Breathing out a long sigh – an affectation he had never quite been able to rid himself of in the thousands of years since the last time he had actually had need to breathe – he gripped the knife lodged deep in his chest and pulled it out.

He considered the weapon for a moment, turning it over in his hand to watch the setting sun catch on the edge of the blade.

“Are you thinking of adding another memento to your collection, my friend?”

“Perhaps,” Varalan Sor conceded, turning to face the new arrival.

K’rul stepped out of the forest, head cocked to the side as he considered the Imass. “Perhaps not?”

Varalan Sor shrugged, pocketed the knife, and shrugged again. “They still have some ways to go until they’re ready, old friend.”

“But they’re certainly on the right track, I’d say.”

Varalan Sor huffed his dry laugh. “Do you think the mage—no, the both of them, really; do you think they have any idea what they are doing? What they are headed into?”

K’rul shook his head and echoed Varalan Sor’s earlier response. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps not?”

“We will see.”

Behind them, the ramshackle boat carrying two rather relieved youths and one disgruntled Nacht disappeared beyond the horizon.


End file.
